this is amazing and will change life forever: live text translation via augmented reality

nice, it'll be on android too i'm sure.

  On 12/17/2010 at 6:56 AM, Ranky Redlof said:

  On 12/17/2010 at 6:48 AM, dr lopez said:

  On 12/17/2010 at 6:41 AM, Ranky Redlof said:

I'm still waiting for the flying skateboards

well they're available on amazon oh wait....

yeah! he would send you stumbling down queer street with his weakest jab!

I'm impressed

holy f%ck

it's a free app of only 3.1 mb.

this seems more like 2110

what the...

the potential is amazing. but FUCK them for not making it iphone 3g compatible.

They could make one that you point at WATMM and then it renders it with funny threads

It obviously doesn't work quite as well as the demo video but it's still incredible, I love it! I haven't bought either of the dictionaries though. If they release a french one in the next week that'd be nice since I will be in Paris for a couple of days...

Potentially amazing

PS: lols for Data and Dr Lopez

shit never works as good as it does in the advert.

  On 12/17/2010 at 3:17 PM, MildewOnRice said:

shit never works as good as it does in the advert.

i have faith that one day, it will (and will work better, even?). but we won't notice it because it'll be a gradual development. just like with all technology really.

  On 12/17/2010 at 2:20 AM, chaosmachine said:

it doesn't matter if the translation quality is poor, that part is pretty much guaranteed to get better. the ability to detect and redraw the words in live video is what's awesome. and this is just the first release, imagine what will be possible in a few years, as this idea matures and hardware gets even more powerful. imagine being able to put on some glasses and read any book, sign, newspaper, magazine, etc written in any language... imagine being able to insert hyperlinks in any text on the fly... etc, etc. you could just move to any country and never worry about not being able to read stuff.

 

and eventually audio processing will catch up as well..

= doesn't compute

  On 12/17/2010 at 2:52 AM, chaosmachine said:

  On 12/17/2010 at 2:48 AM, nene multiple assgasms said:

 

how does the translation quality not matter? I'd like to see this with more than just short phrases and simple sentences.

yeah my guess is that it works well with SVO phrases where O is simple, but what if O is a relative sentence or something of the same flavour ?

  On 12/17/2010 at 2:20 AM, chaosmachine said:

that part is pretty much guaranteed to get better.

 

 

in other words, it'd be trivially easy for them to hook into, say, google translate, which gets better all the time, thanks to machine learning algorithms. the dictionary v1.0 currently ships with is meaningless, the breakthrough is the visual processing technology involved, and the places that technology is going to take us in the next decade.

Google translate is (still) a joke. let's try to translate this piece of text, in which Bourdieu, points the flaws of the 100% grammatical approach of Chomsky's generative/universal grammar (which this software most likely relies on).

original

googletranslated

= google totally perverts bourdieu's thoughts.

He basically says, that you cannot consider language or languages as a set of words and grammatical rule. It doesn't work, as languages heavily rely on context (what's written in the next and previous pages) and on cotext (who's speaking ? where ? to whom ? what's your social position ? etc...). So you might be able to translates words written on signs, but you won't be able to read books with this (proof of it is that they don't show it is possible in their teaser). Even if there was such a technology, you'll probably have to feed the whole book to the lens, because translating a book requires to know the context ("the meaning of words depends on the meaning of the whole text, not the other way around" says the componential/interpretative semantic theory).

  Quote

the breakthrough is the visual processing technology involved, and the places that technology is going to take us in the next decade.

THE REAL BREAKTHROUGH IN THE LHC IS THE WAY THEY DISPLAY COLLISIONS ON THEIR COMPUTERS, THE REST OF THE MACHINERY IS JUST TRIVIAL

And we will have reached the future when the UN or the EU will use automatic translators, which is not nearly to happen.

  On 12/17/2010 at 4:05 AM, chenGOD said:

Now if I could only get youtube to stop spitting up "an error ocurred. please try again later" on every goddamned video on watmm...I'd be happy.

don't whine i'm from the other side of the atlantic : someone has to pay for the transatlantic cable but nobody wants to. Who's gonna pay ? ISPs or google/youtube which generate and benefit most of the traffic ? This question has not been answered yet. Consequently, youtube is slow as hell. SLOW AS HELL U EAR ME !!!

  On 12/17/2010 at 10:19 AM, modey said:

the potential is amazing. but FUCK them for not making it iphone 3g compatible.

I think it's because this software needs a good camera, which the 3G iphone has not.

Also this kind of software already existed back in 2005 when i was learning japanese. You could take a pic of a kanji, and it would get translated.

relax babar, I know it's jarring suddenly living in the future but we're all just trying to live our lives the best we can

  On 12/17/2010 at 3:47 PM, Coalbucket PI said:

relax babar, I know it's jarring suddenly living in the future but we're all just trying to live our lives the best we can

ZING!

Show me what the thing displays when you point it towards text written on a surface like this:

probably a blurred box under the standard Arial font in the standard color. Blur (or calculating blur) is the only way for it to be able to have the text written on the same background color, which is why I'm skeptical of this being pulled off in real time on a phone yet.

turns bong water into curry

beef tongue with spicy anchovy sauce sounds good even though it's apparent they are presenting that as a "need-to-know" vacation item an american wouldnt want to end up with

  On 12/17/2010 at 3:36 PM, Babar said:

let's try to translate this piece of text, in which Bourdieu, points the flaws of the 100% grammatical approach of Chomsky's generative/universal grammar (which this software most likely relies on).

i wouldn't expect this software to suddenly offer insightful translations of complex prose any more than i'd expect a hearing aid to suddenly give deaf people the ability to transcribe guitar tabs by ear.

but, like a deaf person suddenly gaining the ability to hear, or a wheelchair giving the legless the ability to move around, even if crude, this technology will change lives by dramatically increasing the ability of the average person to function in a foreign language environment.

and, as far as what will be possible with this kind of technology in the future...

  Quote

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

--Arthur C. Clarke

this is awesome. it seems like something you could own in the future but i can use it now? woah

  On 12/17/2010 at 3:36 PM, Babar said:

 

Google translate is (still) a joke. let's try to translate this piece of text, in which Bourdieu, points the flaws of the 100% grammatical approach of Chomsky's generative/universal grammar (which this software most likely relies on).

It's more likely that purely statistical methods (i.e. markov chains) are being used than Chomsky's universal grammar. Chomsky is far too complex to have any real practical value. And apart from it's complexity, it's far from perfect too. Statistical methods often lead to better results in more efficient ways. Chomsky's biggest contribution was putting the science/math into linguistics, not revealing scientific truths in the field of linguistics.

Phah, they also said that mobile telephones will change the way we live and communicate and where exactly are the results eh?

  On 12/17/2010 at 3:17 PM, MildewOnRice said:

shit never works as good as it does in the advert.

  On 12/17/2010 at 9:06 PM, chaosmachine said:

  On 12/17/2010 at 3:36 PM, Babar said:

let's try to translate this piece of text, in which Bourdieu, points the flaws of the 100% grammatical approach of Chomsky's generative/universal grammar (which this software most likely relies on).

 

i wouldn't expect this software to suddenly offer insightful translations of complex prose any more than i'd expect a hearing aid to suddenly give deaf people the ability to transcribe guitar tabs by ear.

 

but, like a deaf person suddenly gaining the ability to hear, or a wheelchair giving the legless the ability to move around, even if crude, this technology will change lives by dramatically increasing the ability of the average person to function in a foreign language environment.

 

and, as far as what will be possible with this kind of technology in the future...

 

  Quote

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

--Arthur C. Clarke

Your comparison would work if this software were for linguistically disabled people - aphasics. Which is not the case : you still need your own eyes to read and some parts of your brain to decode the output. This software doesn't fix an impaired competence. So what is it useful for ?

Appart from changing the way you tourist yourself around the world, I don't see any durable use you could have of this application. It's supposed to change life.

It could be really useful in a country that uses ideograms, that's undeniable, but it doesn't do that at the moment. But I don't think an exile would use it on a daily basis. Reading signs is probably what you learn to decode first. It could be useful for a few weeks, or months. But if you plan to stay for a long time, you won't use this much. It will be another "cool tool" you'll place between aroundme and SimpleHTMLColors on your iphone's dock.

the tech is cool, but i don't really think this particular application is life changing. speech is a lot more important and i don't think we're anywhere near having a babelfish like device.

  On 12/18/2010 at 3:03 AM, Babar said:

Your comparison would work if this software were for linguistically disabled people - aphasics. Which is not the case : you still need your own eyes to read and some parts of your brain to decode the output. This software doesn't fix an impaired competence. So what is it useful for ?

Appart from changing the way you tourist yourself around the world, I don't see any durable use you could have of this application. It's supposed to change life.

It could be really useful in a country that uses ideograms, that's undeniable, but it doesn't do that at the moment. But I don't think an exile would use it on a daily basis. Reading signs is probably what you learn to decode first. It could be useful for a few weeks, or months. But if you plan to stay for a long time, you won't use this much. It will be another "cool tool" you'll place between aroundme and SimpleHTMLColors on your iphone's dock.

Actually... I think you've hit the nail on the head there.... it isn't particularly useful, except to tourists.... and therefore.... not exactly life changing (I'm sure a majority of the world never get a chance to go to other countries at all actually, even people from developed countries).

At best it's only slightly useful in very specific situations for a very small portion of the population.

But it'd still freakin' awesome!

There are other possibilities of course. Like street sign recognition, artwork recognition, I don't know but evolving this might show more potential. Or it might just fail or get overrun by some other gismo millions of hipsters will love and help finance into skynet.